


Sang Froid; or, an Ass-Backwards Vampire Trio Marriage in However Many Parts

by AndaisQ



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: AU, F/M, Human Edward - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Timeline Swap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-29 10:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3893602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndaisQ/pseuds/AndaisQ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, as a basic summary, is the story of how I, Edward Anthony Masen, ended up marrying the man and woman of my sexy nightmares, turned into a sparkly murderer, and ended up accidentally joining the winning team.</p>
<p>And how my mom is a smug asshole. But that's, you know, kind of a given.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 401 Pairs of Eyes

Forks, Washington was a pretty small town. It had just over three thousand permanent residents; the "downtown" contained a gas station, a sad little movie theater, and a handful of mom-and-pops. Its high school had 358 students, plus 25 teachers and 18 miscellaneous staff members, for a total of 401 people in the building on any given school day, minus whatever fractions were feeling sick or lazy or out on a hunting trip. Towns that small tend to have a pretty strong reaction to newcomers, since they don't often get any. I arrived in the middle of the first semester expecting some stares.

On the day I walked through the murky glass doors of Forks High, I felt about 401 pairs of eyes land right on me.

I tried to ignore the attention, making my way to the office to retrieve my schedule. The office was small, its carpet a hideous olive-green, its walls sunny yellow plaster. When I opened the door, the faux-distinguished faux-blonde behind the faux-wood desk immediately stared at me. She had the eyes of a scavenger. "Edward Masen?" she said, with an expression that disgraced the good name of the word "leer".

I smiled at her, trying not to look too creeped out. Not for the first time, I cursed whatever evil fairy had crashed my christening and made me attractive to middle-aged women. "Yes. I'm here for my schedule?"

"Well, naturally." She started rummaging through her desk. "So, what brings you to our little town?"

"My mom's finally doing well enough to take me in again. And I didn't want to spend another minute in Dad's house."

She paused, then decided to laugh as if I had just told a very funny joke. "Well, anyway, here you go. Map on the back, and all."

I took the schedule and looked it over. "Thanks."

"Don't be a stranger, now."

She actually _winked._

I turned tail and fled.

 

I made a clean escape into the entrance hallway. Just as I was thanking my gods, I was waylaid by a brutally perky dark-haired creature who held out her hand to me with a Listerine-bright smile. "Hi! I'm Jessica Stanley. You're Edward Masen, right?"

Her hair was impeccable behind a purple band. Her outfit had a calculated ratio of Bedazzled sparkle to halter-top sexuality to messenger-bag professionalism. This girl was dangerous. I shook her hand with an attempt at a smile. "Hi. Edward, yes, but-"

She giggled. "Great! You moved here from Phoenix, right? It must be  _so_ weird for you, going from the land of sun and sand to Damp Hellhole, Middle of Nowhere. "

"I mean, it's not-"

She barreled on, an unassailable steam engine of perk. "But Forks isn't so bad, really! Do you want me to show you around and all? I know pretty much everybody around here, I'll introduce you to the body public. Come on!"

She set off at a determined power-walk, rattling off the five-dollar tour as she went. I followed helplessly in her glittery-sneakered wake.

 

Jessica's five-dollar tour turned out to focus a bit less on historic Room 302, home of the AB Calculus class, and a bit more on "that's Ricky Serrano, he's a real peach if you don't mind chest-thumping homophobia," and "Lauren Mallory, who once shoved a pickle somewhere that should not be named and nobody will ever let her forget it," and useful notes in that vein. To be fair, they actually were pretty useful. I got a good roadmap of the social structures around Forks High and a heads-up on who to avoid. And who not to trust with any information I didn't mind being cocktail party fodder forevermore, namely Jessica herself. (I got the definite feeling she was attracted to me, but from what she'd told me about her not-quite-boyfriend Mike it didn't seem like that'd stop her.)

After a comprehensive meet-and-greet, Jessica let me extricate myself and get to Spanish class. Like every Spanish classroom in the continental United States, the walls were covered in vaguely Spanish-themed decorations, such as maps of Spain and posters of matadors and miscellaneous fruit  Señor MacDonald  could point to and ask people to name  _en español_ . The good  Señor MacDonald  was as Anglo as the day is long, but to his credit, he didn't have pretensions to fluency. I told everyone my name, where I was from, and  _un dato interesante_ about myself ("Me gusta mucho el Jello azul," which got a scattered chuckle from the class). That out of the way, we started on mind-numbing vocab work.

The rest of my morning classes continued in much the same way.  The only class of note was Bio, in which the class was doing an interesting-looking blood typing lab. I couldn't participate, because I hadn't gotten a parental signature on the form I hadn't received last week, when I lived in Arizona. Instead, I Crushed Candy at the back of the class, rolled my eyes at the XKCD printouts lining the walls, and waited for lunch.

 

After bio, I was immediately shanghaied by Jessica, who was waiting outside the door of the class. (Did she have a copy of my schedule? What the hell?) "Hey Edward! How was class?" she chirped, an arm slung over my shoulders to prevent escape.

"Uneventful?" I tried.

She tittered. "Well, that's how it goes. C'mon, I'm going to introduce you to more folks, we barely got through half of everybody this morning."

"Does the school pay you for this?"

She grinned. "No, but they should. Come on, we don't have all day."

She dragged me down the hallway. Now that she had her hooks in me, she wasn't so determined not to let me get a word in edgewise anymore. And she seemed to think I was funny, which was nice. She introduced me to another few dozen people before I finally mustered an objection.

"Jessica, this is really helpful and all, but I'd kind of like to eat today. Maybe you can show me around some more after I have some lunch?"

She pouted. "Oh, fine. Cafeteria's this way, eat and then we can move on. Ooh, actually, when we get there I  _have_ to introduce you to Mike. Then you can eat."

"Fair deal."

I followed her to the lunch room, a crowded little box in the center of the school. She looked over the crowd (accompanied, in my head, by Terminator scanning noises) and homed in on a table containing Lauren, Angela, Tyler, Ben, and a boy I hadn't met. He was blonde, and smallish, and cute in a soft, bland sort of way.

"Hey, all!" Jessica bubbled. "Mike, this is the fabled Edward Masen! Edward, this is Mike Newton, my best friend since literally forever."

I smiled politely and extended a hand. Mike shook it hesitantly. Slower than seemed reasonable, really. His hand was really warm and kind of damp. It was a little bit shaky, too. And he was looking at me like-

Ah, _shit._

 

I should probably explain. All my life, I'd had a kind of intuition for certain things. I could always tell when people were looking at me. I could read people's faces really well – scary well, by most accounts. Sometimes I could practically hear what people were thinking, especially if I concentrated.

Most relevant, though? In my seventeen years on this earth, my gaydar had never, ever been wrong, and right now it was screaming "Mike Newton wants your dick!"

I wasn't sure how my low-budget psychic powers  _worked_ , but I'd learned to trust them when they spoke up. But in this case, they were  _not_ being helpful. Like, okay, I'm bi. And Mike was pretty. And hell, his not-quite-girlfriend was pretty and interested in me too, and that was the kind of situation that could lead to distractingly interesting outcomes. But my time in the Paradise Valley High marching band didn't mean I was one of those "sexually active band geeks" you hear about. The farthest I'd ever gone was an intensely awkward handjob with the son of somebody my Dad knew at a dinner party, and the less said about that the better. I was socially inept and virginal and  _totally_ _unequipped_ to handle a social mess of this caliber.

Mike extracted his hand hurriedly after a moment. "N-nice to meet you, man. We should hang out? Some time? D'you like football?"

"Uh... not so much. Anyway, I should... go. Eat. Probably." A masterful deflection. Ten points to Masen.

Jessica frowned. "Aren't you going to eat with us?"

"I can't stand chewing sounds, sorry. Best all around if I eat alone."

"Well, alright. Just circle back around when you're done, alright? Better yet, just pick a table I can see from here so I can swoop down and get you the second you stop eating."

I snorted. "Don't you need food too?"

"Of course not, Edward," she chided. "A true lady needs nothing but choice gossip and a spoonful of aspartame to get through her day. Now go eat. I'll be  _waiting._ "

So I went. The lunchroom wasn't too big, but some tables were empty – it seemed that not everyone ate in the cafeteria, or perhaps the seating capacity was just higher than 300-something. I set down my possessions at a slightly sticky folding table, spent a few seconds wiping it down (Purell being a gift from the gods) and turned my attention to my lunch. The apple was slightly bruised and unpleasantly mealy, but still edible. The sandwich was dry and full of cheap mustard, which should rightly be a contradiction in terms. The pretty girl in the seat opposite was staring at me with her mouth slightly open, and her irises were _bright fucking red_.

 

I jerked backwards and stifled a manly shriek. After manually resetting my breathing, I pointed at her. "You," I gasped, "were not. There. Sitting there."

"You didn't see me," she said.

"No, you weren't there. I know when people are looking at me, and you were not there. Are you a ninja?"

"No."

I waited for further input. It was not forthcoming. She just kept staring.

I looked to the table of people who acted like humans for guidance. Jessica looked ecstatic (was there some delicious gossip to be mined from this? Weird Girl Stares at New Kid, More at 11?), Lauren looked murderous (did she want in my pants _too?_ ), Mike looked bemused (not up on the latest scuttlebutt, I guess), and Angela and Eric and Ben looked like they were eating food. I was apparently pretty much on my own when it came to figuring this out.

"So, uh. What's your name?"

She sighed. "I'm Bella. Isabella Cullen. You're not going to let me just stare at you silently for the rest of your life, are you."

"...No. I'm Edward Masen, by the way," I offered.

She nodded. "Edward's a good name. Aesthetically neat. You kept your dad's surname?"

"...Yes? How did you know that? Any part of that?"

Pause. "I know your mom. We're in the same neighborhood. She goes by Segel."

"My mother lives in the forest."

"Yes," she said patiently. "We live in the same neighborhood of the forest."

"Does the forest have neighborhoods?" I wondered.

She laughed. (It sounded very nice. Her voice was nice. Sort of... crystalline?) "I don't know that it needs them. My parents and I plus Liz makes up the total population."

" _Liz?_ "

"Liz. I like nicknames, Ned."

"No."

She grinned. "Is there a problem, Ned?"

"I am not a Ned. I am an Edward. I'm not an Ed, either, in case you were wondering. Edward."

"Ned, please try to be mature about this. Sometimes people, like me, will give you nicknames, and there is precisely jack shit you can do about it. You are Ned now and forevermore." She nodded definitively.

I sighed. "Why are we being friends now, again? Not that I mind, you seem pretty cool, but you just kind of... inserted yourself. Into my table and also apparently my life."

She paused. "I know your mom, so I decided to befriend you."

"By teleporting to my table, staring at me without blinking for a minute and a half, then assigning me a weird nickname?"

Further pausing. "Yes."

She was a terrible liar. Probably even to people who didn't have lie detection. "So, the real reason isn't going to show up any time soon," I muttered through a bite of sandwich.

Offhandedly, she added, "Plus, you're really pretty."

Fortunately, my blushing went unnoticed amidst the ensuing choking fit.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Bella and I talked for a while longer, but once I finished eating she made herself scarce. Presumably to get something to eat for herself, unless she photosynthesized like Jessica. I made my way over to the human table cautiously.

"Hey, so, uh, how about the rest of that tour?" I tried.

"Are you kidding?" demanded Jessica. "You talk for twenty minutes with Bella 'what in the everloving fuck' Cullen, and then expect to get away without telling me every word she said?"

"What's so special about her? She pretty much just showed up, told me she knew my mom, called me 'Ned', and said I was pretty. And then we... talked about... band stuff?"

Our resident busybody wasn't the only one making faces anymore. Apparently, this was some high-caliber gossip. Jessica and Ben looked shocked, while Mike and Lauren looked murderous. (I noted privately that Angela got going while the going was good. Clever girl.) "Seriously, what's going on?"

Jessica entered her Exposition Machine mode in record time. "Bella Cullen is the Marie Celeste of Forks' gossip mill. In freshman year, she moved here from 'somewhere in Europe' – _her_ words, mind you. She speaks about once a week, as far as anyone can tell. Her grades are literally flawless in every class but English and Art, the teachers of which hate her from the bottom of their shriveled little hearts. She's _apparently_ , given the evidence, straight or at least bi, but until now she hadn't expressed the slightest interest in anyone in her whole time here. As Mike can attest." Mike scowled down at his sandwich.

"And she's a vampire," muttered Tyler.

Jessica rolled her eyes. "And Tyler thinks he saw a picture of someone who looks like her working in a munitions factory in 1938, and that plus the fact that she has some freaky colored contacts is enough evidence to declare her Lestat, yes. Do not get him started, please."

Tyler joined Mike in the scowling corner. I reminded myself not to friend him on Facebook. (I had enough of the vampire conspiracy theorists back in Phoenix.)

Lauren decided that her two cents were needed, for whatever reason. "And she's a total bitch."

Ben snorted. "Just because she's hotter than you and the _C_ page of Riley's yearbook was always sticky-"

"So," I interrupted before things got ugly, "she's weird and mysterious. And she called me pretty, and that's one or more signs of the Apocalypse. What does that mean?"

"You're the Chosen One?" Mike grunted.

"She vants to sahk your blahd?" offered Tyler.

"You are going to become her very best friend and get us all of the choice gossip humanly possible?" hinted Jessica.

"I'm not going to be your insider, Jessica. For one thing, if she doesn't talk to anybody else, she'd figure out I was telling you instantly. Plus that's a shitty thing to do to someone, but we've got priorities here."

"After all I've done for you," she gasped, "all that I've sacrificed, you turn on me now? I _made_ you!"

"We've known each other for five hours. Anyway, I _will_ tell you stuff about her. Just nothing that could be called 'choice gossip'. Because that'd be shitty."

She huffed. "Fine. But you're gonna field my questions, okay? Because I've always really wanted to know her favorite color, but she'd never give me a straight answer."

"I'll try."

  
  


As a cloud of teenagers filtered out of the lunchroom, I thought about the enigmatic Bella Cullen. As I sat through my next class, I thought further on the enigmas of Bella Cullen. In fact, I thought about her enigmas for the rest of the day, with an intermezzo in the men's room during Algebra to think about her, ahem, enigmas. Because, let's face it, that girl was hot as hell.

But _mysterious_.

But hot as hell.

Really, that was basically the summary of my thoughts about Bella for the next few hours. I pondered the fact that she knew Mom – well enough that she knew Dad's name – even though Mom had never been a woman to make friends with her neighbors just because they were nearby. (That was kind of why she lived in the forest.) I considered the fact that she'd seemed to just spontaneously appear at my table, and I hadn't felt it; my weirdo psychic knack wasn't very consistent, but the sense-of-being-watched had never failed me before. Jessica had assured me that she'd walked up like a relatively normal human, and teleportation wasn't involved, which just confused things further. My situational awareness wasn't _great_ , but you'd think I'd have heard _something_. I wondered who the hell called people "Ned" anymore. Maybe she was a big Pushing Daisies fan, or something?

And of course, she was fun and interesting and I felt like I could talk to her forever. And again, super hot. But she was _so weird._

A mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a pair of freaky colored contacts, that Bella Cullen.

  
  


At 2:45, I was soaring down the road in my preposterously shiny new Volvo. (A car had struck my mom as a good "sorry for abandoning you for ten years" present; the car had become very slightly my girlfriend.) Jessica blessedly had a dentist's appointment she hadn't been able to get her mom to reschedule for new-kid hassling time, and though Mike had offered to host me at his place for video games and illicit beer, he was easier to brush off than his girl. I'd told him Mom wanted me back early my first day, and he'd apologized and slunk off like a kicked puppy.

I'd have to figure out what to do about that whole mess eventually. For that matter, I'd have to figure out what to do about this entire bizarre harem anime situation that seemed to have coalesced around me. It seemed like it was easier to list the girls at this school who _didn't_ want to get in my pants. No, it _was_ easier. Angela. The list was Angela. Out of every female I'd personally met today, she alone had decided that Edward Cullen was not her flavor of the week. Maybe she was gay?

I realized, to my horror, that I was actually assuming a girl was a lesbian because she didn't want my dick. This goddamned town was warping my brain.

As I swung into Mom's driveway, I resolved to turn the gaydar on Angela tomorrow, just to check.

  
  


Five minutes later, I found myself sat down in the dining room holding a fresh-baked sugar cookie, not entirely sure what happened. "Spill," Mom instructed.

"Spill what?"

She rolled her eyes. "Edward. You've just had your first day of school. I want all the gossip and small-town politics you laid your grubby little eyes on. Do not deprive an old woman her stories."

"My eyes aren't grubby, and you aren't old," I objected.

" _Spill._ "

Grinning, I recounted Jessica's counsel. Mom listened with the gleeful fascination of a mom receiving a new shipment of vicarious teenagerhood, her eyes sparkling.

Her eyes. Which were a bit distracting, because while I didn't quite remember their color from my elementary school memories, I kind of doubted they were blood-red. It wasn't the only change I'd half-noticed since her recovery from her ten-year battle against Polidori's Etiolation, but it was sure the most obvious. (Her lighter skin, the crystalline undertone to her voice, the personally uncomfortable improvements to her figure... the list went on.) I'd asked her about them, but she'd told me they were all side effects of the disease.

Personally, I had trouble believing it. I'd never heard of P. E., this one-in-a-million congenital blood disorder that could strike at any stage of life, that left you in unthinkable agony for years, that left you looking like a dracula for the rest of your very brief life if you survived. It was in all the medical books under "hell if we know", it had an anemic and poorly sourced article on Wikipedia, and that was pretty much it bar the inevitable vampire conspiracy theory sites.

It was shady as hell. But the only other explanation was the vampires, and that was on the rung between lizardmen and water fluoridation on the conspiracy theory ladder; I wasn't going to turn into one of those nuts on Facebook ranting about Pharrell Williams' graduation photos. So I was forced to accept the stated explanation.

I continued, "Jessica herself likes Mike, but she's got half an eye on Riley, Lauren, and of course, myself. Mike, on the other hand, likes Jessica, Lauren, Angela, and... myself."

Mom cackled. "That's my boy. Growing up into some kind of heartbreaker."

"I'm not breaking any hearts, Mom. I'm not getting involved in Jessica and Mike and, uh, possibly Lauren's, whole _thing._ That's a recipe for sixth grade all over again."

"I maintain that boy was better off with the number of teeth you left him with," Mom said firmly.

"He couldn't talk around the denture properly until grade 8."

"And he couldn't talk shit about your boyfriend either, which meant you didn't have to take out any more of his teeth for him."

I shook my head. "Anyway, I lost the thread. Oh, yeah, so, apparently everyone except Angela's infatuated with me. The only one who I'm actually interested in is Bella Cullen, though. Who you apparently know?"

"Yeah. Sweet girl. We met through the Polidori support group; she'd gone through the worst of her blanching when I showed up, and she helped me through mine. Nice as anything."

Well, that made sense. I'd thought she was just some kind of goth, but if she had the same obscure and nonsensical disease as Mom, there was at least... some amount of connection there. They could dracula together. "She's really nice, yeah. We hung out at lunch. And apparently we have Bio together, but she wasn't there today.

Mom grinned. "She skips class a lot, yeah. _She's_ not in love with you, I'm guessing."

"Well, uh, maybe?" I looked down at my cookie. "She said I was pretty. And that she wanted to stare at me forever. It was kinda cute."

Silence. I looked up. Mom wasn't grinning anymore. "What?" I asked. "It was. She's cool, she plays the clarinet and stuff."

"I'll _bet_ she plays the fucking clarinet," she muttered. "Listen, Edward, that girl is dangerous."

"Because she plays the clarinet?"

She made a frustrated noise. "I'm sure you're right, you'll get along great, like I said, she's a great kid and all. But if she ever makes you uncomfortable – if you ever feel threatened in the slightest by her or her family – you come _straight_ to me. And I get you out of the country."

What the fuck?

"What?" I asked aloud. "She's a teenage girl, not John McClane."

"She's very nonthreatening, yes. Just keep it in mind, that's all I'm asking. You have the option."

I nodded slowly. "Alright. But I'm still confused. Sure, Bella's kind of weird, but not like... _scary_ weird. She doesn't seem like she'd track me down and firebomb my car, or whatever."

Mom gave me a Look. "Of course not. You'd know, after all; you had all of lunch with the girl. Maybe I'm just a poor little middle-aged mom who's anxious about her little boy being courted by all the girls at his school now that he's all grown up, just ignore me. Bella's great. Very stable."

Just as I opened my mouth for a return volley, the doorbell rang. She froze where she sat.

The doorbell rang again, and I went to get it. Bella stood outside, wearing motorcycle leathers and a "who, me?" grin.

"Hi, Lizzie! Can Edward come out to play?"

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I'm writing fanfiction again after three whole damn years, which is, uh. Something. This story is the product of a massive AU I've built up in my head over the past twelve months that starts from the seed of "the Cullen couples are swapped around in the timeline, and also I really want to fuck around with vampire biology". So, expect kind of inhuman vampires. And Cullens with a somewhat elevated badness level. (Except Carlisle, who is as always a mutant freak.)


End file.
